The philosophy Aesthetic Realism gives to anthropology the depth, kindness, and scientific accuracy that the human sciences need and are hoping for.

From the Novel: Her second was born an hour before dawn, when it was cold, in the Rainy Season. According to custom, the child was nameless for 27 days and was secluded with her in a birth house built in a quiet tree-covered place by her brother and herself.

Those 27 days she held the small being in her arms, taking turns with her sister who was secluded with her. Thus the most vulnerable days for the infant were taken care of, keeping the baby steadily warm in mountain weather, cold even indoors.

Bettiana looked at his soft skin, the color of sunny earth. She felt his fingers grasp at her, and while he sucked milk from her breast she felt, blissfully, "The world is so kind." Then, in the dark, her mind seemed to turn upside down, and she remembered how insultingly her husband had ignored her opinion in the garden. Again, he said the potatoes she was ready to harvest weren’t big enough yet! She cradled the infant closer and thought, "But my baby loves me." The babe seemed to reply by paddling its little arms in the air and gurgling. Read more from chapter 1

Anthropology is about you, whether you live in a NY apartment or a mountain home in Papua New Guinea. Aesthetic Realism gives to anthropology the depth, kindness, and scientific accuracy that the human sciences need and are hoping for..

In this class we study diverse cultures and people, and their relation to ourselves. The principles of Aesthetic Realism, founded by poet, critic, and educator Eli Siegel, enables the anthropologist to give full reality to the feelings of people from every culture and background, including your own. This knowledge can, and does, end racism and vastly increases kindness —a statement I make carefully, definitely, and with great hope. Read more

Winter / Spring 20156:00 - 7:30 PM on Alternate Wednesdays

How do we see the world? How do people around the world see this world we are in? Do people want change how they see? What have been the consequences over time, and today, of seeing that’s not accurate, does not have good will?

Eli Siegel is the man of thought who showed the way one sees the world is crucial to how we see everything in our lives. The data of anthropology meets what’s deepest in the mind of everyone—and demonstrates how true this is. Using samples from world anthropology we will look at this carefully.

Jan 21 Two Ways of Seeing the World in Ruth Benedict’s Chrysanthemum and the Sword, a Study of Japanese Culture

In which I discuss my own life and that of the great anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, using his famed Diary in the Strict Sense of the Word, written in New Guinea 1914-1918. This paper is about the division in every person between being "practical" and "idealistic." I suggest in this paper that Malinowski, who was very courageous in the Diary, wanted to resolve this division in his tremendous contribution to anthropology, Functionalism. Read more